The Psychology of Attention

By Harold E. Pashler

Publisher's description
In the past two decades, attention has been one of the most investigational areas of research in perception and cognition. However, the literature on the field contains a bewildering array of findings, and empirical progress has not been matched by consensus on major theoretical issues. The Psychology of Attention presents a systemic review of the main lines of research on attention; the topics range from perception of threshold stimuli to memory storage and decision making. The book develops empirical generalizations about the major issues and suggests possible underlying theoretical principles.

Pashler argues that widely assumed notions of processing resources and automaticity are of limited value in understanding human information processing. He proposes a central bottleneck for decision making and memory retrieval and describes evidence that distinguishes this limitation from perceptual limitations and limited-capacity short-term memory.

A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1998

Tetrahydrobiopterin: Basic biochemistry and role in human disease

Author's preface
The purpose of this book is to bring together for the first time some of what has been learned about tetrahydrobiopterin last during the last 35 years. In 1963, we showed that this compound is the naturally occurring cofactor for phelylalanine hydroxylase. This finding opened up a new field of enzymology, one that is still being explored: the pterin-dependent oxygenases. The most recent harvest from that field is the discovery that nitric oxide synthase, the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of the "molecule of the year", NO, is a tetrahydrobiopterin-dependent enzyme. The work on the cofactor also laid the groundwork for our understanding of the pathogenesis of the variants of phenylketonuria that are caused by defects in the recycling and biosynthesis of tetrahydrobiopterin. There is growing evidence that defects in the metabolism of this compound may be the cause of the other diseases.

One of the unique features of this book is that it includes detailed discussions of both the basic biochemistry of the cofactor and the clinical fields that were illuminated by the basic work. Indeed, some readers may wonder why such detailed coverage of the hydroxylases is included in a book about tetrahydrobiopterin. The reason is that most of what we know about how this compound functions stems from what has been learned about how it functions with the amino acid hydroxylases, determining the way in which these enzymes catalyze their reactions and the way they are regulated in the cell.

Since this is a field that is still growing, the book can present only a snapshot of its current status. I could have postponed writing a book like this until the field had stopped growing, but by then it might have been devoid of its current excitement.

The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore and London. 1997

Children with Specific Language Impairment

Publisher's description
Approximately five percent of all children are born with the disorder known as specific language impairment (SLI). These children show a significant deficit in spoken language ability with no obvious accompanying condition such as mental retardation, neurological damage, or hearing impairment. Children with Specific Language Impairment covers all aspects of SLI, including its history, possible genetic and neurobiological origins, and clinical and educational practice. The book highlights important research strategies in the quest to find the cause of SLI and to develop methods of prevention and treatment. It also explores how knowledge of SLI may add to our understanding of language organization and development in general.

Laurence does not limit his study to English, but shows how SLI is manifested in speakers of other languages. Although his focus is on children, he also discusses adults who exhibited SLI as children, as well as parents of children with the disorder whose own language abilities became the object of study.

A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England. 1998

Exercises in Rethinking Innateness: A Handbook for Connectionist Simulations

Publisher's description
This book is the companion volume to Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development (The MIT Press, 1996), which proposed a new theoretical framework to answer the question "What does it mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The new work provides concrete illustrations -- in the form of computer simulation -- of properties of connectionist models that are particularly relevant to cognitive development. This enables the reader to pursue in depth some of the practical and empirical issues raised in the first book. The authors' larger goal is to demonstrate the usefulness of neural network modeling as a research methodology.

The book comes with a complete software package, including demonstration projects, for running neural network simulations on both Macintosh operating systems and Windows 95. It also contains a series of exercises in the use of the neural network simulator provided with the book. The software is also available to run on a variety of UNIX platforms.

A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England. 1997

Virtual Reality in Neuro-Psycho-Physiology: Cognitive, Clinical and Methodological Issues in Assessment and Rehabilitation

Editor's description
The book, whose idea comes from the work made within the EC-funded Virtual Reality Environments for Psycho-neuro-physiological Assessment and Rehabilitation -- VREPAR -- project is a collection of chapters from researchers who have pioneered the ideas and the technology associated with virtual reality. More in particular, the book discusses the clinical principles, human factors, and technological issues associated with the use of virtual reality for assessment and treatment in neuro-psycho-physiology.

The book is divided in three main sections comprising 13 chapters overall: virtual reality for health care, virtual reality for psychological assessment and rehabilitation, and virtual reality for neuro-physiological assessment and rehabilitation.

The first section of the book contains two chapters written to provide a broad introduction to the use of virtual reality in health care. The two chapters provide basic definition and background material which thus sets the stage for future chapters. Specifically, Chapter 1, written by Moline, surveys the current applications of virtual environments for health care: surgical procedures (remote surgery or telepresence, augmented or enhanced by surgery, and planning and simulation of procedures before surgery); medical therapy; preventive medicine and patient education; medical education and training; visualization of massive medical databases; skill enhancement and rehabilitation; and architectural design for health care facilities. Chapter 2, by Lewis and Griffin, provides an overview of the human factors involved in the virtual experience. The authors also identify specific factors which are likely to affect the incidence of side-effects during and after exposures, and which need to be understood in order to minimize undesirable consequences.

The second section of the book provides information on the possible application of virtual environments for psychological assessment and rehabilitation. Chapters 3 and 4 offer a broad introduction to the research in this field. In Chapter 3, M. North, S. North, and Coble describe the therapeutic approach that can be used to overcome some of the virtual reality in the treatment of specific phobias: fear of flying, fear of heights, fear of being in certain situations, and fear of public speaking. Chapter 4, written by me, describes the context of current psychological assessment and underlines possible advantages of a VR-based assessment tool. The chapter also details the characteristics of VIBRS, Body Image Virtual Reality Scale, an assessment tool designed to assess cognitive and affective components of body image. The remaining four chapters discuss specific applications of virtual reality: for the treatment of Autism (Chapter 5 by Strickland), for the palliative care of cancer (Chapter 6 by Oyama), for the treatment of body image disturbances (Chapter 7 by Melis and myself) and to diagnose and treat patients with psychological and psychiatrical difficulties (Chapter 8 by Hirose, Kijima, Shirakawa and Nihei).

The last section of the book contains five chapters that focus on the current applications of virtual environments in neuro-physiological assessment and rehabilitation. Chapters 9 and 10 define the rationale for the possible application of virtual reality in this field. Specifically, Chapter 9, written by Rizzo and Buckwalter, provides an introduction to the basic concepts of neuro-psychological assessment and cognitive rehabilitation, along with the rationales for virtual reality's applicability in these complementary fields. The authors review the relevant literature regarding theoretical and pragmatic issues for these applications and provide references for further reading. In Chapter 10, Rose, Attree, and Brooks describe the new opportunities offered by virtual reality to pursue several aspects of the rehabilitation process. The value of the technology of virtual environments in this context is that it allows the clinicians to immerse people with brain damage in relatively realistic interactive environments which, because of their patterns of impairment, would otherwise be unavailable to them. Finally, in the last chapters are presented many different applications of virtual reality: for the treatment of hemiparesis, unilateral neglect and cerebral palsy (Chapter 11 by Wann, Rushton, Smyth, and Jones), for the quantitative analysis of neuromotor disease (Chapter 12 by Rovetta, Lorini, and Canina), and for the therapy of multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury (Chapter 13 by Steffin).

IOS Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 10558
Burke, VA 22009-0558
USA. 1997